In the subcategory manager, you have the ability to easily change the display order of the sub categories for the current category.
Additionally, if the current category is a "Top Level" category (ie: right below the "root"), then you can use the "Teaser" toggle (change to 1 to make the subcategory a "Teaser", 0 if it's not). Teasers are the subcategories that show up on the search engine's "Home" page, called on by <<SUBS>> in the "HOME_PAGE" internal template.
Clicking the "Import Category Tree" link will open up the category import window, where you can dynamically pull in a list of categories and subcategories at the current level, from a text file that you've uploaded to your server.